Tom Levitt

The Natural Stance Tom Levitt

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The Natural Stance offers a wide ranging discussion of the technical, historical and philosophic aspects of Funakoshi's karate, with reference to Ari Anastasiadis, father of Shotokan in Canada. The author discusses the karate of Asai, Egami, Kanasawa Kase, Kobota, Nakayama Oshima, Oyama, Plée, Tokitsu, Yokota, and others in and around Shotokan. The Natural Stance discusses the 'natural' natural stance, Nakayama's hard-soft personal style, Mabuni's 5 principals, classic ipon kumite, the 20 Chinese precepts, the relation between tai chi and karate and much more. The Nature Stance explains how Funakoshi conceived karate as a community oriented form of personal and social development in the Okinawan tradition. It is the author's hope that The Natural Stance will help show the relevance of Funakoshi's karate to the needs of the present human condition. The Natural Stance offers incisive, holistic discussion of karate. As such, it ranks along side of Yokota's writing as one of the very few books which deals with the problems posed by the commercialization sportification and militarization of karate. Fantastic Find 5 stars Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2017 Verified Purchase An old time JKA student here, student of one of the great Japanese instructors, and I have to say that this is the kind of book I search for in my continued karate path of understanding. Not another dumb encyclopedia trying to copy, but a refreshing new philosophical and very well cited and researched book. The ideas are new in that I've never read such a viewpoint of JKA karate, yet it speaks truth in ways that only a practitioner of true karate might find similarities and truths. We might not agree with everything, but the newly proposed ideas of old practices, or collating of ideas from decades of print and magazines, and summarizing in a theory of how the Japanese refined and sold karate is unique. Any JKA student must have a love and hate relationship, ups and downs, and how nice to see another point of view. A must for any black belt who is interested in theory, history, and philosophy. Thanks Tom Levitt from NJ